Volunteering

February 26th, 2024

At the start of 2020 I was asked to help out a small local recreational cricket club in rural Leicestershire, who I have represented in the past. The Club had fallen into a state of disarray largely through well-meaning but poor leadership. A lack of discipline, organisation and focus had led to dwindling interest, insolvency and near closure. This is not uncommon with a great many organisations highly dependent on volunteers.

Simple governance, financial and operational steps have dramatically turned around the Club’s fortunes over 4 years to the extent that it has a growing membership, extensive sponsorship and the ability to deploy significant capital to upgrade facilities.

The challenge with small volunteer-driven clubs and organisations is you have to work with what you have, the enthusiasm, skills and expertise. People can choose to absent themselves for periods of time, and continued commitment is not a given. They are inherently fragile organisations, where the future is only as good as the commitment levels of the strongest contributors. It is easy to get distracted by trying to keep everyone happy when the reality is if you don’t properly support your strongest contributors, there is no tomorrow.

Grazie Mille

November 23rd, 2023

There is an Italian deli here in Chelsea, Luigi’s, favoured by local celebrities such as Hugh Grant and Elizabeth Hurley. The sign outside proudly announces this is their 45th year of serving customers. To drum up more lunchtime business recently they have been begun advertising and selling “discounted” trays of salads, lasagna and so on. You ask after ordering “how much?” and you find with an £8 box of salad comes a receipt for £9.50 with your card returned very politely, and a “grazie mille” (thanks a thousand) as you depart!

This is not an isolated occurrence, I don’t think I have ever seen a price displayed and a payment match. The place is rarely empty and the food is rarely less than delicious.

Is eating well more important than sleeping well? I have come to conclude that is the case for both Luigi’s proprietors and customers, where value trumps price!

Need For Speed

November 15th, 2023

If you manage a small and mid-size business and don’t appreciate that “service” has two key metrics: quality of the client outcome and speed, you are woefully under prepared.

In ordering additional schoolwear for my daughter this week, the Head of Sales at the recently acquired family business refutes service deficiencies by defending his firm’s technical manufacturing challenges, embroidery and order book, in meeting a surge in consumer demand for his products. “It is not a service issue”, oh, yes it is!

The Head of Events at a 5 star London hotel is given instructions and asked for a quick proposal first thing the next morning, which they agree to. Their proposal arrives late in the afternoon, by which time my client has needed to make a decision. When asked why they weren’t considered, speed was highlighted as a key purchasing criteria.

We live in a “ready now” world whether we like it or not. That means manufacturing, distribution and communication systems need greater “redundancy”, people and technological capacity to address exceptional requests, and meet or exceed clients’ needs. If you are a small business and dispute that or simply refuse to offer that level of service, no surprise your best customers and prospects are going to your competition.

Looking Back To Move Forward

November 13th, 2023

Here in Britain, the struggling Conservative Government turn to former Prime Minister, David Cameron, to revive their electoral fortunes 12 months or sooner from the next election. How many other examples can you cite of a returning founder or CEO in private business albeit in a different role, Board Chair, having a lasting impact? Politics is a funny game!

Synchronised Marketing and Sales

October 26th, 2023

Does “Sales” lead “Marketing” at JP Morgan or “Marketing” lead “Sales” at ? Does it really matter? In businesses large and small across the planet that conversation is being had daily, and the answer is, stick with what works best in your organisation and your ideal customers.

What fundamentally doesn’t work is when marketing activities assume every buyer is your ideal buyer and the ability to connect marketing investment with attraction of ideal buyers, conversion, implementation and expansion, is opaque. If it is not discernibly moving conversations forward with your ideal buyers to your ideal destination, it is not working. Don’t blame others, look at the robustness of your system, the people undertaking the work and the relationships you need to build, cultivate and retain.

Idiotic Management: Zurich Insurance Company

June 27th, 2023

I live in an area of Central London where street parking is a fact of life. Last year a negligent driver performed a u-turn and collided with a Deliveroo motorcyclist. Thankfully no one was hurt badly, although my nearby parked car bore the full impact of the careering motorcycle. My insurer, Zurich Insurance Company, finally organised and settled the £400 repairs after endless reminders over several weeks. This is an insurer whose CEO, Tim Bailey, trumpeted his firm’s support services on winning an Insurance Times Claims Achievement Award “for keeping customers at the heart of what we do”. That message seems to have escaped his underwriting and pricing teams. The renewal offer landed this week with a 10% increase and a nearly two-fold increase in the deductible to £750 due to the “overnight parking location of the vehicle”. The car has been parked, as have prior owned cars in the exact same street for 2,000 night previously without any damage! Tell me reinsurance or loss costs have risen fair enough to justify premium rises but not a one-in-a-million loss caused by a third party…

Precaution

June 5th, 2023

There are times in my family life where you see a sequence of events unfolding where you can influence but not control the situation. My wife will admonish me if I interrupt our conversation, to warn of imminent danger in reversing the car into a shiny barrier yards away, or my daughter for not looking left and right as Deliveroo scooters run a red light. You can take it as a personal afront (self-worth) or pass it off as a caring thing to do. Safe or sorry? Is it better to speak up than to wish you had said or done something? I know where I sit on that spectrum.

Entrepreneurial Marketing

May 27th, 2023

Some pseudo marketing experts have a need to make marketing excessively complex and wrapped in a language of its’ own to address their own insecurities. Entrepreneurs have learned to unashamedly make what is simple simple. Skin in the game. There is a clear symmetry between their success creating customer need and their own personal fortune.

Out of Here

May 26th, 2023

When I see an automated “Out of Office” reply notice, which then says I have “no access to email” I really wish that to be true but seriously, why not be honest? “You are not my priority right now, I will not reply to you until XX/MM. Please contact Angela for an urgent response”.

Value Partners

May 16th, 2023

I am tiring of early stage and high growth entrepreneurs, who desperately need greater help in attracting their ideal partners (capital, distribution, and so on) for their business growth but refuse to invest upfront in their own success.

They have money, whether it is supporting existing payroll and benefits or their own personal lifestyle expenses (private schools, mortgage, holidays), they just don’t trust their own judgement in parting with it to resolve the increasing ambiguity and complexity within their businesses.

The visible lack of confidence in their own future and poverty mindset, is precisely what is turning off their ideal partners. If they won’t accept and change their own behaviour, why should others underwrite the risks that they are taking in their entrepreneurial businesses?